Biography
Al McBride was a Marine Workers Industrial Union organizer and First World War veteran active among Tampa's tobacco workers. Authorities arrested him in a raid on a workers' meeting at Ruskin, near Tampa, during the crackdown on the 1931 strike. Police accused him of shooting an officer at the November 7 Russian Revolution anniversary meeting. He faced charges of assault with intent to murder, inciting a riot and liquor-law violations, and bail was set at $15,000. Labor-defense accounts described broken ribs from a beating at his arrest and more than seventy-five days of pretrial confinement. McBride was subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison. The International Labor Defense organized his defense alongside that of the other Tampa defendants.
The Southern Worker of August 8, 1931, page 2, reports an earlier arrest and discharge of Tampa TUUL organizer Al W. McBride during a campaign of raids and confiscation of revolutionary literature. This predates the November Ruskin prosecution; the earlier report supplies no exact custody dates or duration.
The January 7, 1932 Daily Worker identifies the Ruskin organizer as a World War veteran and Marine Workers Industrial Union member held under $15,000 bail. It specifies assault to murder, inciting riot and liquor-law violations; the headline’s broader murder/death rhetoric is not substituted for these printed charges. Trial on January 12 remained prospective. November 7 dates an alleged shooting, not an established jail-admission day. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n006-NY-jan-07-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
Page 2 prints his signed letter and identified post-jail photograph. He explicitly reports being free after serving seven months in the Tampa prosecution and describes sixty days incommunicado, censored mail under immigration inspector C. B. Hopkins, and denial of visitors and counsel. The seven months describe actual reported confinement, distinct from the previously reported ten-year imposed sentence. No exact admission or release day is established. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n189-NY-aug-09-1932-DW-LOC.pdf
Earlier Tampa arrest report
The Southern Worker of August 8, 1931 (page 2, “Fla. Bosses Try to Stop Organizing”) names Tampa organizer “Al W. McBride” and reports that he was arrested and then discharged during police raids and confiscation of labor literature. The first name, surname, Tampa location and labor-organizing context correspond to this profile. This is an earlier report, not the separate November Ruskin prosecution described above. The article does not give the earlier arrest or discharge day, establish an executed jail admission or a length of custody, or say whether any charge was adjudicated. No additional imprisonment total or structured custody date is inferred.
Daily Worker, August 9, 1932; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
A letter signed by Al McBride in May 1932 Labor Defender describes police arresting him with J. Walker and Walker’s unnamed wife during a farm raid at Ruskin and seizing literature and party papers. It prints January for the raid without stating a year in that passage; other accounts already recorded here associate the prosecution with the November 1931 Tampa repression. The differing chronology is retained without selecting a new arrest or admission date, creating another McBride case or adding a duration. The letter’s proposal to send him to a state hospital is not treated as an executed transfer.
